Because I should be packing for P-Con and doing the day job.
– An interesting statement by Christopher Handley’s lawyer on the subject of obscenity and manga, and why they chose to plead guilty.
– A great article on fear being the enemy of gender equality (thanks Nnedi!).
– A suggestion that the iPad is the Wii of the tablet market. Actually the thing I found most interesting about this is that if you go into a computer games shop in the UK all of the effort goes into selling XBox and PS3 games, with the Wii stuff hidden away in a small corner. That’s odd if Wii is easily the top-selling console. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be buying an iPad until it has the eye-friendly Kindle-style screen. The iPhone hurts my eyes quite enough.
– Peter Tennant of Black Static takes the opportunity to show that not all male horror fans are sexist. Nice piece of PR by TTA Press there, which is another reason why it is important to apologize well.
OTOH, one big difference between the Wii and the iPad is that the Wii was clearly designed to be held, carried, and occasionally dropped (though they did underestimate the chances of it being inadvertently flung across the room, IIRC), whereas no such mundane concerns seem to have intruded on the iPad design process. One repeated comment from the launch that stood out for me was that even though reporters only got to hold it for a minute or so, that was long enough for it to start feeling heavy and awkward. When people talk about how you’ll want to get an iPad for every member of the family, I wonder if they have really thought through how long a giant iPhone is likely to survive in the hands of an actual child.
Hadn’t thought about the screen illumination issue, probably because I don’t have an e-book reader…